Date of Award

Spring 6-7-2019

Document Type

Honors Project

University Scholars Director

Dr. Christine Chaney

First Advisor/Committee Member

Dr. Daniel Schofield

Second Advisor/Committee Member

Dr. Samantha Robinson

Keywords

sulfur hydrogen bonding, ir spectroscopy, red shift, ethanethiol, trimethylamine, vapor-phase IR spectroscopy, albedo effect, climate change, dimer, intermolecular forces

Abstract

Hydrogen bonds are a subset of non-covalent interactions that occur between X-H — Y, in which X and Y are the very electronegative atoms. In our research, we examine the more unconventional hydrogen bond-like interactions of thiol (SH) containing molecules using vapor-phase infrared (IR) spectroscopy and ab initio computational chemistry. When the SH hydrogen bond donor complexes to a hydrogen bond acceptor, a red shift of the SH stretching mode emerges. An anharmonic oscillator local mode model is applied to the ethanethiol-trimethylamine dimer, and we determine that any IR evidence of dimerization in our experiment is likely obscured by the asymmetric absorption of CO2.

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